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Slave (unit)
Slaves are an upgrade of Citizens. They cost Wealth rather than Food, have no ramp cost and are trained much faster, but they have much less health and a smaller attack than ordinary Citizens. Slaves can be recruited only if you have selected Offensive Doctrine as your Military policy and Patronage as your Civic policy at the Meeting House. In Rise of Nations, Wealth is a very costly resource. Indeed, Wealth may well be harder to obtain than Food, given that it can be generated only by researching Taxation upgrades and/or building sufficient Markets and/or Wonders, so it would seem odd why anyone would want to create a worker-type unit which seems to be harder to create. The reason lies in two areas - the Slave's cost and training time. Unlike normal peasant units Slaves have no ramp and are easier to accumulate, Wealth willing. As long as you have sufficient Wealth, Slaves can be used to repair and consolidate newly taken cities from the enemy because they can be trained quickly. One Slave may well be worth three free Citizens because the same amount of resources that you may have used for a Citizen may allow you to purchase three Slaves, thus allowing you to quickly repopulate decimated areas in your realm. So while it takes a while for Slaves to appear immediately in the game, those who can access them early on however will discover that they will have a very powerful advantage, having a cheap and reliable labour force in the late game. Slaves may also mean the difference between victory and failure in wonder-based strategies, since wonders take a long time and need many citizens in order to be created. Slaves, however, are weak and unlike normal Citizens in Rise of Nations cannot be armed, however they might be able to be used as a last resort to slow down enemy armies from taking your cities if need be, whether by garrisoning defensive positions or by going out to distract the enemy - their poor tactical stats do not permit them to be anything more than that. Slaves are a vital part of the Achaean League's economic strategy. Because the Achaean League can research Policies at the Meeting House for free, it only takes two clicks for them to achieve a slave-based economy. So for an Achaean player, slaves can be very valuable indeed once a sufficiently high level in Civics or Commerce has been achieved because this then unlocks access to the market (required to sell resources for more Slaves) or the temple (to generate taxation income to purchase more). As for the Bactrians, however, the value of Slaves is rather moot given that they are expected to be able to create Citizens in a twinkling of an eye. As Bactria, you may be better off saving up your wealth for other projects as opposed to relying on Slaves to build up your economy. Other factions which might benefit well from slaves also include the Carthaginians, Lusitanians and Getae because of their greater access to wealth. Of these, the Lusitanians may have the best deal — Slaves recruited for mining eventually reproduce their worth in Wealth, and can even be killed off when no longer needed. History In ancient cultures, slavery — a practice now considered repugnant by modern standards — was the practice of subjecting individuals to forced labour without compensation. Slaves could be recruited through various methods, but the most common source of slaves was often through abduction or captivity through warfare. The ancient Western world was notorious for its reliance on slavery as the mainstay of its economy (this was especially true of the Roman empire), the intensity and pervasiveness of which perhaps to a degree would surprise most modern people today. Contrary to modern perceptions of slavery (which have been coloured by the experiences of 19th century black Americans in the southern United States), slaves were not limited to just "blue collar" jobs, but even manned banks, worked as salespersons and managers, and even served as secretaries and teachers. To be a slave, however, wasn't always a bad thing. Slaves could earn property which did not belong to their master and could even have their own slaves, and some even lived in security and comfort. Some were manumitted for good service, others eventually saved up enough money and sometimes became rich because they could apply their former work experience to their own business ventures. One Athenian slave working as a clerk for bankers did so well at his tasks that he inherited the bank he was indentured with and ended his days as a remarkably wealthy man. Overall however, it was not socially desirable to be a slave. Slaves usually had no rights of their own, were considered as the property of their masters and could be sold off or purchased. They could also be arbitrarily tortured or put to death by the same, although for some such destructive behaviour would have been seen as unnecessarily destructive if not wasteful. The fate of slaves who displeased the Roman governor Vedius Polio (who fed them to a school of lampreys in his villa) underlines the extreme dangers slaves could expect to face in their economic and social bondage. thumb|A Roman slave feeds slop to some pigs. Some Greek slaves goofing off|thumb Category:Units